A friend recently asked me what are my family’s traditions for Christmas. Besides a formal meal, we also purchase and decorate a Christmas tree, the latter usually to the backdrop of nostalgic Christmas songs and candlelight. But the most familiar tradition, even an oft-lamented one in our materialism-saturated society, is the exchanging of gifts. But I am convinced there is nothing inherently wicked with either the getting or the giving of presents.

Gift and give are newer forms of a presumed old, old root, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *ghabh- meaning “to give or receive”. Before it reached English, it appeared in the Old Norse with a definition “gift, good luck”. For a while it was pronounced yiven, before the guttural ‘g’ resurfaced. An initial ‘h’ sound is also associated with the root, developing into the somewhat opposite word have. Isn’t it interesting that giving and receiving are so closely linked that they’re all mixed up with the same family of words?

Present specifically carries the notion of something offered, freely, but before it is received. It is set in the presence of one, placed “before their face”.

The word receive has a more Latin than Germanic heritage, entering English c. 1300, about 200 years after the Norman French conquest of England, from the Old North French, meaning at that time “seize, take hold of, accept”. I like the emphasis on the fact that a gift cannot simply be thrust on someone; the action is interactive, with the receiver willingly taking the gift. In earlier forms, found in Latin, the word meant “regain, take back, recover, take in, or admit”. There’s a sense of vengeance contrasted with the sense of hospitality.

Hospitality is, in Greek, xenia, especially referring to the “rights of a guest or stranger”. There is a city in Ohio named for this word. I think that is a lovely motto of which to be reminded every time one’s city is mentioned. It is not so much seen in our country as in many other nations, including the Israelite tribe whose generosity to the poor and stranger in the land was mandated by the Mosaic Law (see also this passage).

Hospitality is also a French/Latin borrowing, also since the 1300’s. It comes from a word meaning “friendliness to guests”. Compare this to the word host, whose entry at Etymonline.com goes further than the longer form hospitality. Host goes back to the PIE *ghostis- which is supposed to have referred to both the host and the guest, with an original sense of referring to strangers, on whichever side.

In the 1993 movie, “Shadowlands”, based on the life of C.S. Lewis, there is a scene about Christmas in which he is discussing the fate of the season in their mid-century culture:

One [Inkling] laments, “I’m afraid Christmas, as I remember it, is rather a lost cause.”

Jack, as his friends call him, and sounding rather like his voice is echoing out of far-away winter-bound Narnia whispers, “It’s because we’ve lost the magic… You tell people it’s about taking care of the poor and needy, and naturally they don’t even miss it.”

To which his friend, a Roman Catholic priest, responds, “The needy do come into it: ‘no room at the inn,’ remember? The mother and child?”

I do like to remember that. I like that older songs remember that. I like that my friend this year asked for suggestions of how to make our holiday reflect the truth of this verse, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” She wanted to know how to celebrate being made rich and to imitate Christ’s poverty-bearing, rich-making love.

There is a tradition of being charitable particularly at Christmas. (This is in the line of other, biblical feast-days, during which kindness to the poor was encouraged in response to God’s blessings of abundance that were being celebrated, especially in the harvest-feasts of Firstfruits and Tabernacles. It is a way to recognize that it is God’s undeserved blessing that provides enough to survive or feast. If we, by pleasing Him, do not relinquish His grace, we are to expect His continued blessings. And He is pleased when we remember the poor and have charity towards them. We can give like the saints in Philippi, depleting our own storehouses, knowing that the God who is using us to care for the poor will faithfully provide for us as well.)

This responsibility to the poor is communicated by the history of the word generous, which originally meant “of noble birth” (same root as genus, referring to biological descent and classification into kinds or races or families) and only by implications of the duty, of those blessed with more, to share with those who have less did it come to mean “magnanimous”.

Benevolence, “disposition to do good”, is a compound word, from the Latin bene “well” and volantem “to wish”.

Alms is another term for this benevolence. In Old English it was ælmesse, occurring also in German, and Latin, where it is spelled eleemosyna. This was, in turn, borrowed from the Greek eleemosyne, referring to “pity, mercy”. In modern English, though rare, it means a gift, especially of money or food, given out to the needy.

Charity is from the Old French, “charity, mercy, compassion; alms” from Latin, “costliness, esteem, affection”. Isn’t it instructive, the impulse of expressing love by costly, sacrificial giving? It can be satisfying, and blessed, to give.

Love is, by own definition, the giving of a treasure. Treasure comes from the same Greek root as thesaurus, and it means “hoard, storehouse, treasury” – presumably of something worth enough to be collected and kept safe. Can stores be shared? What does it say when one is willing to disperse a hoard?

Donation is attested in Latin, donum, “gift”, from the PIE *donum. The same word is found in Sanskrit: danam “offering, present” and in Old Irish dan, “gift, endowment, talent”.

In my family’s tradition, the focus is more on expressing love to one another than to those less fortunate. Our gifts are an exchange, late 1300’s, “act of reciprocal giving and receiving”, from the Latin ex- “out” and cambire “barter”. Cambire is supposed to be of Celtic origin, the PIE *kemb- “to bend”, developing in the sense of altering the current state, then specifically changing something by putting something else in its place.

At Christmas especially, the packages under the tree are almost always wrapped, so as to be a surprise. Unexpectedly, this word used to mean only “a taking unawares; unexpected attack or capture”. The roots are sur- “over” and prendre “to take, grasp, seize”. It might be ironic that though we think of thinly cloaked gifts as surprises, at Christmas they are not always unforeseen or unexpected; who hasn’t made a Christmas wish list? In fact, it is perhaps a disadvantage of our custom: that gifts come to be expected, or even demanded, by the recipients.

When the word wrap appeared in English around AD 1300, it meant “to wind, cover, conceal, bind up, swaddle”. I think we do this to increase the ornamental feeling of festivity, not as a symbol of the baby Jesus being similarly wrapped before being placed in a manger.

Swaddle seems to come from a word meaning a slice or strip.

Ribbon, which often adorns our gifts, might have a similar historic meaning, if it is related to band, “a flat strip” and “something that binds”, a rejoining of two divergent threads of Middle English, distinguished at one point by different spellings, band referring to joining together and bande to a strip or even a stripe (where it likely morphed into ribane, a stripe in a material). The original root of band is, PIE *bendh- “to bind”.

Something else we use to hold things together when we’re wrapping them? Tape. My cousin says, “tape, lots of tape.” This Old English tæppe is a “narrow strip of cloth used for tying or measuring”. It could be formed from the Latin for “cloth, carpet”, tapete, or it might be related to the Middle Low German tapen, “to pull, pluck, tear”.

(These words are so fun, the way they communicate the action by which the thing got to be – or the state that inspired and enabled an action. What was life like for the people who named a strip of fabric tape? Well, maybe they were pulling on cloth {reminiscent of one of my favorite Christmas movies, “Little Women”, where the ladies of the house spend time tearing old sheets into strips to be used as bandages for those soldiers wounded in the American Civil War}. Why would they do that? To have something with which to bind things together. It’s a different world from our manufacturing-driven lifestyles, where tape and ribbon and string are purchased in packages off of shelves. They’re things made originally for their purposes, not improvised from something else. It’s like a history lesson in a word!)

The other reason we think of gifts during the holiday season in which we remember God’s entry into our world in human flesh is because His birth was honored by gifts from wise visitors from the East. These men recognized that Jesus was born to be the King, the long-prophesied King of the everlasting kingdom. And though this God-King could have turned stones into bread, and summoned armies of angels, He chose to experience poverty. Though He experienced the lowliness of being born to a poor mother and living as a refugee, a stranger, in Egypt, he was honored by costly gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh when a very young boy.

Such is the nature not only of love, to give sacrificially, but also of worship. How remiss would any of us be, to overlook the presence of the Highest King? Not only is His worth expressed by Kings giving Him treasures; it is demonstrated by the “sacrifice of praise” every person can offer: The Christmas carols sing that the wise men have “come to pay Him homage,” Old French “allegiance or respect for one’s feudal lord”, from Latin homo, “man”. Or in “What Child Is This?” we are bid to “haste, haste, to bring Him laud”, also Old French, “praise, extol” from Latin laus, “praise, fame, glory”. A cognate, or brother-word in Old English was leoð, “song, poem, hymn”. He is worthy of the richest treasures. We owe Him everything we have, everything that is. We also owe Him our allegiance, our praise, our songs.

I have been pondering the relationship between singleness and widowhood (or widower-hood) for about a year and a half, maybe more. Several friends have lost spouses and been willing to share bits of their post-marriage life with me. My grandma has way less experience with singleness than I have, but entered it when my grandpa died over a year ago. In some ways these people can mentor me. They can look on single life with the wisdom of more years than I have. In other ways I get to encourage them, with the perspective of someone who’s had plenty of time to think about the consequences of singleness. I can point them to finding their identity in Christ rather than in their relationships. I can share with them that I know relationships with every other single person suddenly got more complicated. I can pray for them as they seek God for what to do with their new-found time. I can pray for them as they wait on God for remarriage (if that is what He is leading them to do), just as I pray for my single friends waiting for God to bring them their husbands or wives.

One way or another, there is more commonality between widows and single people than between those who are married and single people. We always-been-single people have less acute grief, but, if we desire marriage, still have a sort of long-term sadness over the years we have been alone.

A year ago, teacher and author RC Sproul, Jr. lost his wife to cancer. He’s been blogging on and off about the experience since then. Today he said this: “The wait that I have has now multiplied, because I am without her. This past year has been not just the hardest, but the slowest of my life. I wake earlier than I wish, and lie awake at night while wanting to sleep. The things I once looked forward to no longer appeal. Isn’t half the blessing of a blessing having someone with whom to share it?” And as I read that I thought that he was well expressing something that I’m coming to understand. Maybe he noticed it because it was a change from what he was used to, and I have not noticed it so clearly because I just gradually came into experiencing life this way.

But life and waiting seem expanded because the waiting itself keeps me awake, distracts me. Time is going slowly for me – but too fast when I look backwards. I’m grateful my days are full. Grateful that most of the time waiting doesn’t distract me completely from living. I’m grateful even for the earlier mornings or the later nights when I am praying about the loneliness and the waiting.

I don’t think that it is wrong to notice that some activities aren’t as appealing when you’re single. It isn’t necessarily discontent – though it could be, and it is worth guarding against!

This is the life that God has given me. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Let us be honest about what it is and isn’t. Let us present to God the desires of our hearts. Let us not grow weary in doing good. Let us embrace waiting, and fully grieve things that are truly sad. Let us celebrate the things that are true blessings!

Two of my bestest friends got engaged this month. The two friends who honored me by allowing me to be a bridesmaid in their weddings have each come to Colorado to visit recently. These circumstances are giving me opportunity to rejoice in the blessing RC Sproul, Jr. talks about: the double blessing of sharing a blessing with someone else. I’m the voice of “awww!” when a husband holds a door open; when a fiance chooses something that her beloved prefers even though it isn’t her favorite; of celebrating the good plan of God in bringing people together and building love and unity between them. I’m laughing and giggling and sharing with them my perspective of the value marriage has. I know marriage is hard work, but it is a privilege. It is a work of faith in a trustworthy God. It is rewarding. It is mysterious and amazing!

This practice, of encouraging my almost-married and newly-wed (relatively) friends, may be rubbing off. It may be hard for me to stop noticing love and forgiveness and cooperation and complementing gifts and servant-heartedness and fruitfulness – and pointing them out: amongst longer-married people, and between friends, and in the Church. I’m excited! God is revealing to me more and more that He desires His people, His image, to be recognized in our love for one another! I pray for it and seek it and delight in it!

Friday was one of those days in one of those weeks from one of those months. My closest friends are out of the country or on their way out. One will be gone for a whole semester, to the blissfully romantic Oxford, the Oxford in England, full of history and literature, thought and conversation. In England there is rain, there is beauty, there is architecture, there are accents! What’s more, she’s going to study worldviews in a small class of 9 Christian young men and young women, doing life with them. Already she sends home emails reveling in happiness beyond her expectation.

On Friday I was feeling rather alone and untraveled. Autumn is here with an air of adventure, and none has knocked on my door. But God is quite the gracious Giver of good gifts. He blessed me with hours of conversation in the evening. Friends gathered and the casual conversation was whether God changed His mind, and the way He ordains intercessors for us against His wrath. Then we officially talked about jealousy, but we didn’t say much on that topic. What actually happened led into a discussion on grace and glory, predestination and the rights of God versus the rights and capabilities of man.

Even though we didn’t delve into jealousy, our text was 1 Corinthians 13:4: “Charity suffereth long and is kind. Charity envieth not; Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” Charity, or LOVE, does not envy. It is not jealous. Love is the call of all Christians towards their neighbors. Jealousy prevents us from entering into their happiness in the way Paul describes in Romans 12. The simple reminder that love is my call was enough to convict me of my attitude towards my friend. So I decided to rejoice with her. (I really am absolutely delighted for her experiences, and excited for their impact!)

But the grace and the lesson didn’t end. Deciding to rejoice with her, I was yet challenged by my friend’s confession of happiness. Her email bubbled over with enthusiasm for life and people, and happiness at being where she was. Once she even wrote she can’t remember the last time she was so happy. When was the last time I was simply happy? What did it look like?

The privilege and delight of seeing a friendly face can light my face with a smile, and untroubled happiness. Knowing God is in control and He’ll take care of the details is blessed happiness. Knowing I am blessed is reason to be happy. And I am so blessed. So I set out to be happy.

Saturday I went to Steeling the Mind Bible Conference, put on by Compass Ministries. I imagined the happy me, which is much easier to live out when brought to mind! Should I see a friend, I would be happy. Should I spend the day with my dad alone, I would be blessed. Should I get encouragement in my walk with God, I would have assurance that He was heeding my days. And He was. He let me know.

For example, the second-to-last speaker was a woman raised as a Muslim. One of her many points was that Muslims live in fear, not only of non-Muslims, not only of “monsterous” Jews, but even of each other. Women obviously fear men, who have essentially absolute power over them. They also fear the envy of others, by which the jealous party would, they superstitiously believe, put a curse on them: the evil eye. Envy and fear of envy separated the community, leaving no room to trust anyone. Jealousy is a serious issue.

In the British Isles, there is rain. Here the past week we have had rain more days than not. Friday night it rained. Saturday night, too. I’m afraid to sleep for missing some evidence of God’s grace reminding me that “no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” But even sleep is a peaceful, cozy gift.

This morning at church we watched part of Beth Moore’s teaching on the Blessing of Asher. Asher is a Hebrew word translated either Blessed, or Happy. Leah named the second son of her handmaid Asher, after years envying Jacob’s love of Rachel and jealousy over his affection. At last she simply named a son “happy,” content and blessed, going forward straight on the way, fruitful. And Beth Moore taught us not to be responsible for the happiness of others (or of ourselves!); happiness is a gift by the grace of God, so we ought to seize our happy moments, with gratitude.

A friend blessed me with a compliment when I needed the encouragement, and her husband even offered to help diagnose my poor car whose Service Engine Soon light has been on and off for over a year (but I haven’t found a good mechanic to fix it). My day was really too amazing.

After church I sat in a meeting of youth leaders, pondering the high school girls small group of which I’m a part. And I realized that I’ve been running around, forgetting to be God’s vessel, forgetting the blessing it is to share life with these ladies, forgetting that when I walk with God, I will want to and be able to connect with the girls in love. There doesn’t have to be a formula or a schedule. If I want to see them, this won’t be a burden. In my life I’ve observed that happiness (and pain at times, and many other things besides) comes through people, through fellowship, through getting deeper into relationships and community. Do you realize what release I remembered and reclaimed?

Finally, on my way to visit my aunt in Greeley, CO (and my grandparents and a few cousins, an uncle and another aunt), I was riding in our big, truck-like van, watching light glint off the ring that reminds me of God’s presence and claim on my life. So often I ask Him for things, but today I thought of the way characters pray sometimes in biblical dramatization novels by the Thoenes: “Blessed are You, O Adonai, who…” So I started. God is blessed for being, for doing, for giving. Blessed is He for knowing the end from the beginning. Blessed is He for ordaining good works. Blessed is He for holding my friends in His strong hands. Blessed is He for being my sure refuge and comfort. Blessed is He for the blood He shed, and for reminding me of His faithful covenant through the Lord’s Supper this morning. Blessed is He for the celebration that the Lord’s Supper is and represents, the community of saints waiting for the Beloved. Blessed is He for hearing my prayers. Blessed is He for being Almighty.